README file for the COCOA_ROOT/tests/ directory

Date: 11 February 2005

This directory contains test programs for the CoCoA Library.
These programs are intended to exercise various aspects of the
library, and to verify that the expected results are produced.
The programs are generally neither interesting nor useful; in
some cases they may deliberately exhibit poor use of the library.
Good examples of how to use the library are kept in the directory
COCOA_ROOT/examples/.

To compile and run these tests, execute the command "make check"
from the COCOA_ROOT directory; you can alternatively simply run
the command "make" from this directory.

For each test there may be several files:
  test-XYZ.C    program source in C++
  test-XYZ.in   input for the test program
  test-XYZ.out  expected output the test should produce (on stdout)
  test-XYZ.err  expected output the test should produce (on stderr)

After compilation and execution you may also find these files:
  test-XYZ       executable corresponding to the source test-XYZ.C
  test-XYZ.cout  output the program actually produced (on stdout)
  test-XYZ.cerr  output the program actually produced (on stderr)

These extra files will be present only if the test behaved unexpectedly
in some way.  Three checks on behaviour are made:
  * the program must exit with code 0
  * output on stdout must match that in test-XYZ.out
  * output on stderr must match that in test-XYZ.err
If test-XYZ.out does not exist then no output on stdout is expected;
analogously for test-XYZ.err and stderr.